Building a Memory Network

The average computer user creates tens of thousands of files every year. That’s a lot.

How do you decide what matters, what’s worth holding on to and passing down?

We decide with a daily discernment. Each day, USB Club members crate dig through their laptop to find a file worth preserving.

The file gets copied to their USB, shared with the network, and their friends can preserve it to their USB as well. An authentic digital selfhood, always close to home.

That’s USB Club today, but how did it begin?

USB Club started with a couple of friends around a DJ deck, learning the craft of mixing. One of a DJ’s most prized possessions is their USB. Curated with tracks and hooked on their keychain, always ready to ignite a room.

A movement grew out of these DJ sessions, more and more friends had USBs on their keychains. Naturally, we wanted to make it more inclusive for our friends that didn’t DJ, so we threw a potluck party, but for files. “Bring your USB”, we said, and load it with any thing you want to share.

The night of the potluck about 50 people gathered in a Brooklyn studio. One by one throughout the night people plugged into our laptop and copied their files to a folder. We had a projector up to view some of them, and were amazed that we were seeing sides of our friends we hadn’t seen before. Work-in-progress, screenplays, scanned in paintings, unreleased renders - The USB had provided an intimate medium to share a more authentic, vulnerable and unique expressions.

By the end of the night, we felt two things:

a responsibility to redistribute the files to those that shared in this time and place.

an infrastructure gap to deliver files back to your USB, the medium of origin.

Enter Raprave, a local DJ Collective. They had a similar need to fill - distribute their new mixtape to their in-person audience, most of which were musicians and DJs that already had USBs. With this unique market fit identified, we had one week to build the initial ATM.

We discovered that what we were building was known as a Sneakernet, physically moving information instead of wirelessly sending it. As Aaron Z. Lewis wrote, “USB Club is proof of shared presence. More meaningful than a few taps of your thumb.”

With USBs spanning the globe and over 30,000 files transferred, we had the opportunity to create a network built around these personal memory devices.

The physical act of plugging in your USB grounds the USB Club experience. It’s tactile, intentional, and real. While the medium was well-suited for in-person exchanges, your sneakers can only take you so far.

With the release of the USB Club network, the USBs we distributed became magical. Now you could plug-in to unlock a world of creative, deliberate connections.

Like the initial potluck, the network fosters shared moments of reflection. Share one file a day to see and preserve the files your friends shared that day.

As you wander through old files to share, nostalgia kicks in. You rediscover fragments of past projects, unfinished ideas, and forgotten memories. By the time you’ve chosen a file, you’ve already taken a trip down memory lane.

What you share is a reflection of yourself. Over time a new identity layer emerges, shaped not by bios or status updates, but by the files themselves. This rhythm of discovery creates a level of quality and authenticity we haven’t found anywhere else online.

Most people don’t think about what happens to their files until it’s too late, but digital history is fragile. Files disappear, services shut down, formats become obsolete. When we pass files along, whether intentionally or not, we create small, unspoken archives.

As the network expanded, the demand for faster, more reliable storage grew. Classic USBs serve many well, but power users need higher speeds and capacity. We saw an opportunity to redefine what a USB could be – not just a storage device, but a statement of intent.

Transport is a transparent, dual-sided, one-terabyte solid-state drive designed for elegant performance. A future-proof solution for creators, archivists, and anyone serious about preserving their digital world.

With this new USB infrastructure in place, we're continually amazed by how it proliferates, connecting people and preserving memories in unexpected ways. In an increasingly transient digital landscape, the way you share files shapes how you remember. See you on the net.